Canada sweeps up three fossil awards at the Cancun climate conference

Blogpost by Brian Blomme - November 30, 2010 at 17:50

Another climate conference and another bad start for Canada. On the opening day of the United Nations climate conference in Cancun yesterday, Canada “won” three Fossil of the Day awards — a first, a second and a third place — and swept the awards.

More than 400 leading international organizations, including Greenpeace, vote on the Fossil of the Day awards which go to countries that do the most to disrupt or undermine UN climate talks. Canada has been leading the way on undermining UN conferences on climate change for years now.

Canada won its fossil awards yesterday for working against progressive legislation to address climate change, for cancelling support for clean energy and for failing to have any plan to meet its very weak target for reducing this country’s greenhouse gas emissions.

At the end of last year’s climate conference in Copenhagen, Canada was awarded the Colossal Fossil award as the country that made the least constructive contribution to negotiations, even though Canada did support the Copenhagen Accord. Following Copenhagen, the Harper government was the only country that signed the Accord to file new targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions that were weaker than its targets before the conference.

In Cancun, the political “leader” for Canada is interim Environment Minister John Baird. Baird has already distinguished himself at these conferences. He helped Canada win its first fossil award at the Bali conference in 2007 as the only holdout against science-based targets for developed countries for reducing their emissions.

Now Baird is back which means this country is set for another two weeks of embarrassment in the climate talks. The Cancun conference winds up on December 10, 2010.